


Famous Last Words (Throw On the Black Dress)

by welcometocabeswater



Series: Moonage Series [5]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Death, F/M, Funerals, angry magic girls, gothic aesthetics, hints at aggression, hints at violence, moonage daydream verse, not necessarily moonage canon, post-moonage fodder, trc next generation fic verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 05:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5653330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/welcometocabeswater/pseuds/welcometocabeswater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Indie Sargent deals with grief in her own special ways...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Famous Last Words (Throw On the Black Dress)

**Author's Note:**

> If you are new to the Moonage Daydream series, please don't read this one first. Go read Moonage and then come back to this at your own peril. ;)
> 
> Hello regular Moonage readers. Please don't freak out about this one. It's something I've been messing around with the past few days, and isn't necessarily set in stone canon. I still have a ways to go before I finish Moonage, so there's no telling where the ot3 will be post-canon. So just appreciate a good gothic aesthetic, hey?
> 
> And if you're masochistic enough to want more, let me know, because I have the plot bunny niggle...
> 
> Also note that these characters have gotten away from me and have now kinda transcended the TRC verse, so yes, they are all mine! I only categorised this one under Raven Cycle because it belongs with the rest of the Moonage fodder. (and everyone's last names and Henrietta are still Maggie's.)
> 
> Title reference goes to My Chemical Romance for "Famous Last Words" and "The End"

She pulls the veil over her eyes, the fine netting unravelling in a gradual, and careful roll beneath black kid gloves. It’s too hot for funerary garb in the Henrietta summer sun, and the leather chafes sweaty against her palms. But she can’t bring herself to tear them off around the mourners. Not when a single commiserating touch to a shoulder might light her up with one more person’s pain. Today, she must keep herself contained. There’s not enough love in her anymore to share.

Her fascinator matches the collar of her sleeveless dress, plucked with dark feathers. Raven feathers, for lost kin amongst their unkindness. She regrets being so fanciful with her wardrobe now. For days, she lost herself to pin pricks and the steady purr of a sewing machine’s motor, piecing together a masterpiece. No thoughts toward the rest of the world, just her little project, like many others before it. She’s been designing for years. This is nothing new, just one more dress. One more idea, niggling at her brain, pounding against her skull to be freed. 

But other demons knock against her cranium, demanding their freedom. And those, she keeps well locked up, buried beneath a treasure-trove of things her third eye never lets her feel while it’s too busy spreading love to make space for the rougher things to be dealt with. 

She looked in the mirror that morning and considered tearing the wretched thing off; tearing the wretched thing  _up,_ and crawling back into bed, screaming into her pillow. Because this... this steals the breath from her lungs, tightening those two vestibules of life until it hurts.  She could steal a serving knife from the buffet table and slice her way right up the stays of her corset, let air and love back in until she’s full again.

But that won’t bring him back. None of it will. And her family need her there. So she curls her hair, coloured an indulgent deep purple against a snow white backdrop. The violet swirls like food colouring in icing or tie dye, her blanched porcelain face standing out stark in contrast beneath plum lipstick and smoky-eye. 

She looks like herself, that is, not like anything at all. Nor like any version of herself that anyone has ever seen, because that’s what she is: a whirly-gig of changing faces, here one minute, gone the next. Would her brother even recognise her at his own funeral? Would it even matter?

She realises, belatedly, as a prim, elegant figure makes her way toward the processional, skirts swirling around her ankles in the gritty wind, that she’s not dedicated the dress to the wrong body. The dress is too small, too tight around a boyish figure. This should be a waif’s dress; a dancer’s dress. A dress for a fighter. 

A dress for a widow.

Indie’s been selfish, thinking only of herself all this time behind closed doors of a musty incense and cat-filled sewing room at 300 Fox Way, when her own lawful sister and dearest friend’s been cleaved of the very thing that keeps her heart beating in her chest. Is she not loved? Does she not deserve love? The love that’s been stripped from her so abruptly? After everything she’s been through?

Indie’s never been faced with such anguish; such failure. 

Violet approaches, shoulders drawn back and nose in the air beneath a swooping summer hat, territorial, like she might take a bite out of everyone here. She brought the girls with her, a clasp of tiny fingers to preoccupy each hand. Lord knows the fiercest lioness of their pride has murder on her mind, now more than ever in her own brand of grief. Her girls keep her honest, reminding her not to reach for the nearest column of throat and squeeze. More importantly, they remind her of  _him,_  all sticky-sweet from pancake breakfasts and the hint of a tune hummed between pursed lips. 

This is no place for a child. Nor is it a place for a sociopath with nothing left to lose but her own daughters, barely measuring waist-height against their mother’s long legs. 

“Violet,” she breathes, greeting her as jovially as one can at a husband and brother’s funeral. Her hands fold together, careful fingers peeling off her kid gloves, one knuckle at a time. She reaches for her, up on tip-toes, even with her high-heels, to wind her arms around her neck. 

Violet stiffens in her arms, the usual instinct when it comes to physical contact, but Indie’s fingers twine around sweeping gold curls until they caress her tender nape beneath. A sigh leaps out of her, barely a mirage in the southern heat between them, and Indie knows, if she’s mustered up enough love in her heart to help a single person through this miserable day, let it be for Violet Gansey, woman torn asunder.

And lord,  _god_ , let it be for her.

 


End file.
